Monthly Archives: November 2013

Philippines Typhoon Disaster Email Scams

Computer Security

As it has been a practice before on disasters of magnitude, malicious/fraudulent email scams are being spread over the recent Philippines typhoon disaster. These emails might contain malicious links or attachments. Beware of such social engineering attempts.

To help you distinguish whether the email is a scam or not, you can do the following:

1. Review the Federal Trade Commission’s Charity Checklist.

2. Verify the legitimacy of the email by contacting the organization directly through a trusted contact number. Trusted contact information can be found on the Better Business Bureau’s National Charity Report Index.

Social Engineering

Glossary

It is a known fact that malware creators often appeal to users, trying to lure them into action to aid infection of the target computer. In computer security this is called social engineering. The user is presented with a scenario that looks legit and then he/she is asked to click on something or install something in order to continue/avoid damage/correct what’s wrong, etc. All fake/rogue antivirus use this technique, trying to make the user install the rogue software or pay for the full version, lest an apocalypse of infections will go unhandled in the user’s computer.